


trees exploding in the depths of winter

by write_away



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gansey has PTSD, Gen, Post-Canon, The Gangsey grieves for who they've lost and who they were
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-21 23:11:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17651462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_away/pseuds/write_away
Summary: Gansey is ungrounded these days.He likes that word - appreciates its strength, respects the way that it hangs and halts conversation, unmoored, when he dares to say it out loud. Ungrounded. It’s good - it works. Before he found it - before Henry whispered it softly in the passenger seat of the Pig at 3 AM with Blue snoring softly in the backseat on a night where they felt blown out of their bodies - he was nothing. Gansey is a lot of nothing these days.





	trees exploding in the depths of winter

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written at all in a long time, let alone written fanfic, but I'm gearing up for the Big Bang so I figured I might as well get back in the game. This is my first TRC fic. Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Gansey is ungrounded these days.  

He likes that word - appreciates its strength, respects the way that it hangs and halts conversation, unmoored, when he dares to say it out loud. _Ungrounded._ It’s good - it works. Before he found it - before Henry whispered it softly in the passenger seat of the Pig at 3 AM with Blue snoring softly in the backseat on a night where they felt blown out of their bodies - he was nothing. Gansey is a lot of nothing these days.

Blue calls him spacey with an affectionate edge to her voice, sharp and round at the same time. Adam goes to free therapy on campus, takes an intro psychology class, changes his major from pre-law and poli sci to social work, and returns to Henrietta for winter break to recommend dissociated. Ronan, who is - as always - quietly thrilled with anything Adam suggests, scoffs and proposes that Gansey is just fucked up.

" _Royally_ fucked up,” he clarifies when Blue nails him in the head with a pillow. He snatches it out of her hands and holds it high above his head, out of her reach.

Henry laughs, fully and completely, his shoulders shaking. “ _Regally_ fucked up,” he corrects, and Adam rolls his eyes and Blue tries to reclaim the pillow to smack him too and Gansey -

Gansey is still ungrounded.

He feels a little pathetic. He has enough of his wits about him to recognize that he ought to be reveling in this second chance, but he can’t enjoy it - he sees Henrietta burn, he feels Blue turn to sap and bark underneath his hands, he tastes his own blood, metallic and earthy and bitter on his tongue. Terror has consumed him. Henry moves in and sleeps on the couch. Ronan moves back in with Opal in tow. Adam promises to move in over summer break with the stipulation that Gansey accepts rent. Blue visits every day, toting new pungent tea blends that Maura has mixed together and cautious kisses that she bestows on his brow.

Weeks pass. His parents call frequently, asking after his college plans once this gap year ends, asking after the travels he claimed he _needs_ the year to experience, and he _has_ been traveling, with Blue and Henry in tow whenever possible - to Peru, to Scotland, to Turkey, to the Grand Canyon - but those trips are blurs in his mind. Anytime he leaves Henrietta is a blur.

Perhaps he’s not ungrounded - perhaps he’s just broken.

It’s a concerning thought.

“It’s as if the universe took me in its arms and flung me at the forest floor until I fell apart,” Gansey explains to Ronan.“And then it put me back together with tape and chewing gum and told everyone that I’d be fine as long as nobody ever touched me.”

They’re watching Opal play in the stream behind the Barns. She’s a happy, if temperamental, creature, and Gansey is infatuated with her in a way that Blue has described as aggressively paternal. It’s not that he necessarily wants to babysit. It’s just that he understands why she seems a little unhinged from this world sometimes.

“Well. It sort of did.” Ronan is sympathetic, though he’d never show it. That’s why Gansey likes talking to him. “That’s why you’re royally fucked up. A clay king held together with chewing gum souls.”

Gansey sighs. “Opal, don’t eat the mud,” he calls out before she can ingest another handful, then turns to Ronan. “Is that supposed to be comforting?”

Ronan shrugs. “Let her eat it, probably has nutrients or some shit. Anyway, if you want comforting, talk to - well, none of us. In case you didn’t notice, you’re the nice one.”

“Except I’m only nice because that’s what you think of me.” And Gansey doesn’t even _feel_ all that nice sometimes. “I’m not held together by chewing gum souls. I _am_ chewing gum souls.” He wrinkles his nose. “I don’t think I like this analogy.”

“You came up with it,” Ronan points out, and that’s the end of the conversation.

One day, Gansey leaves. Leaves the Pig, leaves his phone, leaves his loved ones who are dozing by model Henrietta, and walks as far as he can, walks until his knees ache and the soles of his feet throb as much as his soul on stormy days. When he finally finds his way back home, he tells Ronan to return to the Barns. He fixes the lock on his door and opens Noah’s room for Henry. He buys nice sheets and installs a new desk in Ronan’s old room for Adam. Blus watches with concern furrowing her brow and chatters into the empty space while he cleans. When the sun starts to set, she kisses him softly and heads home before her mother begins to worry. Henry shuts his door and snores. Gansey still does not sleep.

He may not have lost his life, but he thinks he did lose something. What that is, he can’t be sure.

Adam calls him a week after he wanders off. “How are you feeling?” he asks, strain and stress seeping through the feigned casualness.

“Quite well,” Gansey responds, because it seems like what he _should_ be saying. Henry is lying beside him on the couch, pretending not to eavesdrop while he watches a movie on his tablet, but their eyes meet briefly and he nods. “How are your classes?”

“They’re fine - I have a paper due tomorrow and a test on Friday, which I think I’ll be ready for, I just need to - Wait. That’s not the point. That’s not why I called.” Adam sounds flustered. “Henry said you disappeared the other night.”

Gansey raises an eyebrow at Henry, who has the gall to shrug and look surprised. “I went for a walk,” Gansey says diplomatically. He’s still good at that - being pleasing and assuaging fears. “I lost track of time.”

Adam hums on the other end of the line. “Where did you end up?”

“Monmouth.” Gansey tries not to get snippy - he gets snippy now, which never used to happen to him before - but it seeps out in spurts. He blames Ronan. “I was there the whole time. I’m _fine._ ”

He knows they’re both thinking of the time that Adam lost himself on the side of the interstate, where sense and chronology and _self_ dissipated, and he knows that Adam is only looking out for him, and he _knows_ his friends mean well because they’re part of him now. Most of all, he knows this is a sore spot for Adam, which is why he pushed it.

Adam goes quiet. An angry quiet, Gansey thinks. He gets like that now sometimes, too, and now he supposes he knows whose soul to blame for that, too.

Eventually, Henry breaks the silence with an outraged “ _No!”_ and a scramble for his charger at the climax of the movie, and Adam sighs and says he should get back to work, and Gansey agrees and promises to call soon.

It’s moments like these that he misses Noah.

That night, he leaves a note on his bedroom door and lets his feet lead him to the graveyard. Noah isn’t buried there, but Gansey doesn’t know where else to go to pay his respects. Cabeswater doesn’t exist anymore. Monmouth feels wrong. He sits on the cold grass and tucks his knees into his chest and listens to the wind whistle through the silence until Blue arrives with a thermos of hot chocolate. He kisses her hello - and God, if that doesn’t almost make this all worth it, he doesn’t know what will - but they say nothing until the thermos is almost drained.

“Do you ever wonder -” he starts to ask, but he doesn’t even know where his question is heading. He lets it fade into the wind and starts over. “If Cabeswater hadn’t saved me, I think it would still be here.”

When Blue finally speaks, it is slowly. “We finally finished cleaning out Persephone’s things the other day,” she says and takes a small book out of her pocket. “Mom thought you’d appreciate this.”

Gansey takes the book and runs his finger over the spine. There are faded letters on the cover, and deep scratches in the leather, but the pages seem well-preserved. A small thrill shoots through his gut - the type of thrill he hasn’t felt since he died.

“I never really knew Persephone,” he points out, though he can’t bring himself to pass the book back. “Shouldn’t Adam -”

Blue waves his words away. “Adam helped us pick through her tarot cards before he left for school. This is yours.”

Gansey wants to open it, but this isn’t the place. It’s not the time. It’s the middle of the night in a graveyard and the book in his hands is better bound than his own soul. “I don’t understand what this has to do with Cabeswater.”

Blue takes his hand and squeezes. “I don’t know,” she admits. “I don’t really know anything anymore, not since -” She wipes a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand, wrinkling her nose at its audacity to break free. “I miss Persephone, and I miss Noah, and I miss Cabeswater, but you know who I don’t miss?”

Gansey’s brain can come up with a million names: _Kavinsky. Neeve. Greenmantle. Whelks._ Except he _does_ miss them, in a strange way. He can’t really explain it.

Blue must see him thinking this through because she rolls her eyes and pulls him down so she can wrap her arms around his neck and kiss his forehead. “ _You_ , Gansey. Because you’re right here.”

Gansey wants to argue - he’s _not,_ he’s not _him_ anymore, he’s just a sticky gum mess of souls and trees and past and future - but that doesn’t feel right. He _wants_ to believe her. He tries. “Okay,” he says and nods once, firm in his resolve. It feels like something slots into place - that’s a Gansey move, he thinks, and wraps his arm around Blue’s shoulders so tightly that he wonders if they might both burst, like a tree exploding in the depths of winter. “Okay.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feedback is loved and appreciated!


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